Argument supporting existence of a God

[Stripe]

The curly equal sign is intentional then.

:up:

You're the first guy to even notice.

 

[Aimiel]

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.`For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:`and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

 

[Clete]

I see your argument which suggests it unlikely that progressive evolution could account for a God, because of the extreme rarity of key events from elementary random matter -> abiogenesis, to DNA, to a maximized evolution species or individual (God) etc.

However I disagree with your statement which I have bolded and underlined "No, God could not have evolved any more than we could have, not in a million billion trillion years and not in an eternity either
."

Even the most extreme odds against an event, even 10 to the (fill in the blank, largest number you can write)power, is infinitely small against infinite time.

I had no idea that this post existed until I came looking through the thread, which I may never have done. If you use the quote tags, I'll get a notification that I've been quoted and will respond much faster.

So, let's take this one point at a time...

You don't believe that humans have arisen from evolution???

No, I don't. There is NO evidence that it is even possible, never mind that it actually occurred. Using evolution as a basis for a belief in a hyper-evolved god is a false religion on top of a false religion.

Humans are a prime example of "progressive evolution".

Saying it doesn't make it so.

The idea is that intelligence can be a mechanism for enhanced survival.

The existence of intelligence is a prime example of why evolution cannot have happened. The effect cannot be greater than that which caused it.

I see your argument which suggests it unlikely that progressive evolution could account for a God, because of the extreme rarity of key events from elementary random matter -> abiogenesis, to DNA, to a maximized evolution species or individual (God) etc.

I does not merely suggest it, it proves it. I don't think that you appreciate the magnitude of just how "unlikely" the production of even a single protein is, never mind the complex biological machines that exist in the thousands in even the most "primitive" of life forms. Random processes could NEVER produce even one single, do nothing but sit there, protein molecule. Not in billions of trillions of years.

However I disagree with your statement which I have bolded and underlined "No, God could not have evolved any more than we could have, not in a million billion trillion years and not in an eternity either
."

Whether you disagree with it or not is only a function of whether you allow sound reason to persuade your mind. The numbers do not lie. It cannot happen - period.

Even the most extreme odds against an event, even 10 to the (fill in the blank, largest number you can write)power, is infinitely small against infinite time.

No no no. This shows a simple misunderstand of how reality works. Sure infinity is bigger than any number but that's because infinity is not a number, its an idea. Real work (i.e. scientific work in particular) cannot be done with infinity. In fact, when you run into an infinity while doing real science, its an indication that you've made an error or that there is something which you don't understand.

Further, think through your suggested idea that anything can happen if given an eternity (actually the tacit implication is that everything WILL happen if given an eternity). Why would such a thing be true?
If had an whole ocean of amino acids in a perfect environment, after 500,000,000,000 (500 Billion) years of time, have the odds improved that an change of amino acids will self assemble into a single viable protein? NO!
How about after 500 trillion years, is it any more likely at that point? NO!
The likelihood of such an effect occurring does not change with the passage of time!
Why is that? You might ask?
Well, its because the self-assembly of amino acids is not a function of time. Amino acids have no way of telling the time or experiencing the passage of time and don't care whether its been a long time or not. The likelihood of such an event happening is precisely the same at day one trillion as it was on day 1 or at any point inbetween.

And here's the kicker - that's just for the formation of a single protein molecule! This doesn't even touch the actual complexity that would really need to be dealt with because the only way anyone have ever known a protein to be built is for it to be built by other proteins which by some means receive instructions on how to do so which are encoded in - you guested it - other proteins! You've got the most complex chicken and the egg dilemma conceivable! Which protein came first? The proteins (plural) involved in actually building proteins or the proteins the read the intructions on how to build proteins or the proteins in which the instructions are encoded?

AND THAT'S JUST PROTEINS!!!!

There are thousands of other mind bendingly complex biological systems that have nothing to do with proteins (at least not directly) that are also impossible for evolution to produce no matter how much time its given to produce them and all of that has to do with us lowly biological creatures here on this single planet. You propose to send the complexities to a truly transcendent level by positing the notion that a god could have evolved.

Hopefully, you're beginning to see that it's just nuts.


Lastly, using evolution to explain the existence of God is a self-defeating proposition anyway. Where the need for evolution to explain anything if God exists? In other words, if God exists, then why believe we (or anything else) evolved? And if biological evolution is rejected then on what basis would you be able to suggest that God evolved?

See the problem?


Clete

(No time fore editing! Sorry for typos!)

 

[genuineoriginal]

As gamma comes close to one, E=MC^2 becomes a close approximation. You should look up gamma. A gamma of one is the energy of matter at rest.

You are aware that c in the expression is a mathematical constant that has nothing to do with the actual speed of light and doesn't limit the speed that matter can travel, right?

 

[Clete]

You are aware that c in the expression is a mathematical constant that has nothing to do with the actual speed of light and doesn't limit the speed that matter can travel, right?

What?

In Einstein's equations (and most other scientific equations) c is nothing else other than the speed of light. In Einstein's famous equation, E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. The units can vary depending on the application but typically the speed of light, c, is measured in meters per second, or m/s; mass, m, is measured in kilograms, or kg and energy, E, is in joules, or J.

There's no way you didn't already know all of that and so I'm curious to know what your point is.

 

[genuineoriginal]

What?

In Einstein's equations (and most other scientific equations) c is nothing else other than the speed of light. In Einstein's famous equation, E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. The units can vary depending on the application but typically the speed of light, c, is measured in meters per second, or m/s; mass, m, is measured in kilograms, or kg and energy, E, is in joules, or J.

There's no way you didn't already know all of that and so I'm curious to know what your point is.

I know the teaching that c is the speed of light and that no matter can travel faster than the speed of light.
However, that is a false teaching.
c is merely a mathematical constant that is related to the relationship between mass and energy, but how fast light travels in a vacuum has nothing to do with that relationship.
Matter can travel faster than the speed of light.

 

[Catholic Crusader]

I don't believe that anything at all existed (physically) before God spoke, saying: "Let there be light..."

Were I God, I might have said, "Wow! It sure is dark." ... and I'd probably still be all alone in the dark, without any form and simply: VOID.

There was no "material" or "physical" realm before God's utterance.

 

[Clete]

I know the teaching that c is the speed of light and that no matter can travel faster than the speed of light.
However, that is a false teaching.
c is merely a mathematical constant that is related to the relationship between mass and energy, but how fast light travels in a vacuum has nothing to do with that relationship.
Matter can travel faster than the speed of light.

No, it cannot.

I don't know where you're getting this from but you just flatly wrong about this.

c is not "merely a mathematical constant". It is not derived from other mathematical ideas (although it can be and has been) nor is it a number that someone needed to "plug in" in order to make their equations work as Einstein did with his cosmological constant, which he later proclaimed as his greatest scientific blunder. The speed of light has been known for quite a long period of time and over the years has been directly measured many thousands of times in a whole variety of ways.

We not only know that matter and energy cannot travel faster than light, we know why. I won't get into those details here. That's a topic for another thread but just trust me, you are not correct on this point. Modern cosmology, including Einstein's theory, has a great many issues but the speed of light and the veracity of E=mc^2 is not one of them. I recommend that you not make this claim any longer until you've looked into it much more thoroughly.

On the other hand, if you think you can support such a claim, I invite you to start a thread on the topic and make the argument. I promise to read it.

Clete

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html (Click the little c icon in the lower right corner of the screen on this website to see how fast (slow) the speed of light really is.)

 

[ok doser]

since stripe is using the "approximately equal" symbol in his sig line, i'll be a pedant as well and point out that "c" is the speed of light in a vacuum

 

[SabathMoon]

I know the teaching that c is the speed of light and that no matter can travel faster than the speed of light.
However, that is a false teaching.
c is merely a mathematical constant that is related to the relationship between mass and energy, but how fast light travels in a vacuum has nothing to do with that relationship.
Matter can travel faster than the speed of light.

Wrong! It limits the speed of matter, and some think light doesn't travel but just is. Light can't "travel" through a solid object the way that sound can either.

 

[genuineoriginal]

matter and energy cannot travel faster than light

Exceeding the Speed of Light Possible in a Quantum Experiment Since 2000 we have known that light itself doesn’t maintain a constant speed in a vacuum. Experiments back then, at Princeton’s NEC Laboratory, used lasers to produce faster-than-light-speed pulses by passing a beam through a specially constructed chamber containing cesium gas. A 3-microsecond pulse of light which normally would take 0.2 nanoseconds to make it from one end of the chamber to the other, emerged 62 nanoseconds earlier than if it had passed through a vacuum. The phenomenon observed was called anomalous dispersion and attributed to the effect of the cesium gas within the chamber. And what it showed is that light can move faster than the supposed speed limit of approximately 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. At the time of the release of the Princeton Lab findings, the head researcher for the experiment, Dr. Liujun Wang, stated that “Our experiment shows that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, is wrong. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity still stands, however, because it is still correct to say that information cannot be transmitted faster than the vacuum speed of light.” But hold on. Enter quantum physics. In experimental results published on February 8, 2018, in the Journal of Physical Review Letters, in an article entitled, “Two-Way Communication with a Single Quantum Particle,” two quantum physicists, Jinyang Liang and Lihong V. Wang, from the Unversity of Vienna, demonstrate that quantum systems can surpass the speed limit of light. Their experiment involves the exchange of a single quantum particle (a photon) by two individuals at the same time with both in receipt of the results in half the normal time of a transmission traveling at the speed of light. Why is it even possible to exceed the speed of light by double? Because of quantum superposition. That is the single photon each participant in the experiment sends gets canceled or transposed at the same time. The end result, the single photons end up in two places simultaneously.

​

 

[Aimiel]

There was no "material" or "physical" realm before God's utterance.

I don't believe there was any time, either.

 

[Clete]

Wrong! It limits the speed of matter, and some think light doesn't travel but just is. Light can't "travel" through a solid object the way that sound can either.

There is exactly zero doubt that light travels. It's speed has been DIRECTLY measured multiple times.

 

[Clete]

Exceeding the Speed of Light Possible in a Quantum Experiment Since 2000 we have known that light itself doesn’t maintain a constant speed in a vacuum. Experiments back then, at Princeton’s NEC Laboratory, used lasers to produce faster-than-light-speed pulses by passing a beam through a specially constructed chamber containing cesium gas. A 3-microsecond pulse of light which normally would take 0.2 nanoseconds to make it from one end of the chamber to the other, emerged 62 nanoseconds earlier than if it had passed through a vacuum. The phenomenon observed was called anomalous dispersion and attributed to the effect of the cesium gas within the chamber. And what it showed is that light can move faster than the supposed speed limit of approximately 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. At the time of the release of the Princeton Lab findings, the head researcher for the experiment, Dr. Liujun Wang, stated that “Our experiment shows that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, is wrong. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity still stands, however, because it is still correct to say that information cannot be transmitted faster than the vacuum speed of light.” But hold on. Enter quantum physics. In experimental results published on February 8, 2018, in the Journal of Physical Review Letters, in an article entitled, “Two-Way Communication with a Single Quantum Particle,” two quantum physicists, Jinyang Liang and Lihong V. Wang, from the Unversity of Vienna, demonstrate that quantum systems can surpass the speed limit of light. Their experiment involves the exchange of a single quantum particle (a photon) by two individuals at the same time with both in receipt of the results in half the normal time of a transmission traveling at the speed of light. Why is it even possible to exceed the speed of light by double? Because of quantum superposition. That is the single photon each participant in the experiment sends gets canceled or transposed at the same time. The end result, the single photons end up in two places simultaneously.

​

Like I said, do yourself a favor and stop propogating this until you investigate it more thoroughly.

Just is this brief article there's a direct contradiction...

Dr. Liujun Wang, stated that “Our experiment shows that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, is wrong. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity still stands, however, because it is still correct to say that information cannot be transmitted faster than the vacuum speed of light.”​

Both can't be true! The location of a light photon is information. If the photon moves faster than c then the only way you could know that is if the information moved faster than c. Something is wrong with the experiment.

Further, quantum entanglement has nothing whatsoever to do with the speed of light or any other speed. There is a very real sense in which enatangled particles are in more than one place at the same time. I have no idea how that works or what's actually happening but the point is that nothing has to travel anywhere and so no speed limit comes into it.


If you understood anything about the science behind why c is the speed limit, you'd drop this. It's not as bad as propogating the idea that the Earth is flat but it is the same type of error.
Please watch that video I posted.

Clete

 

[ok doser]

There is exactly zero doubt that light travels. It's speed has been DIRECTLY measured multiple times.

I remember calculating it in the lab from experiments using raman spectroscopy- it was a staple of first year physics

 

[Idolater]

Exceeding the Speed of Light Possible in a Quantum Experiment ... the supposed speed limit of approximately 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second....

​

Does anyone find it suspicious that this means that light emitted from the sun, takes just about exactly 500 seconds to get here? (The average distance from the sun to the earth during our annual orbit is about 93 million miles, which is 500 times the speed of light in miles per second.) :think: Coincidence I guess, but it's somewhat remarkable that it's such a round number. To put it another way, if we could see the earth from the sun, all the light of that image of our planet is sunlight reflected back, and the round trip, is 1,000 seconds even. It's a bit remarkable to me.

 

[genuineoriginal]

There is exactly zero doubt that light travels. It's speed has been DIRECTLY measured multiple times.

With a different number every time the speed of light has been measured.

A Brief History of the Speed of Light “If not instantaneous, it is extraordinarily rapid,” Galileo concluded, estimating that light travels at about ten times the speed of sound. Over the ensuing centuries, many other scientists improved upon Galileo’s work by devising ingenious new methods for measuring the speed of light. Their results fell between 200,000 kilometers per second, recorded in 1675 by Ole Roemer, who made his measurement by studying eclipse patterns in Jupiter’s moons, and 313,000 kilometers per second, recorded in 1849 by Hippolyte Louis Fizeau, who sent light through a rotating tooth wheel and then reflected it back with a mirror. The current accepted value is 299,792.458 kilometers per second, or 669,600,000 miles per hour.

​

 

[genuineoriginal]

quantum entanglement has nothing whatsoever to do with the speed of light or any other speed.

Actually, the quantum field has everything to do with the speed of light and how fast matter can travel.

I have no idea how that works or what's actually happening but the point is that nothing has to travel anywhere and so no speed limit comes into it.

If you have no idea how it works, then you should stop trying to tell me to drop this.

If you understood anything about the science behind why c is the speed limit, you'd drop this.

The science behind c being the speed of light is tied up in Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.
Quantum physics does not have the same rules as Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.

Light (photons) behaves like both an atomic particle and like a wave (wave–particle duality).
Subatomic particles have the same kind of wave-particle duality as photons.

The limit to the speed of light is a property of wave propagation through the quantum field.

 

[ok doser]

Does anyone find it suspicious that this means that light emitted from the sun, takes just about exactly 500 seconds to get here? (The average distance from the sun to the earth during our annual orbit is about 93 million miles, which is 500 times the speed of light in miles per second.) :think: Coincidence I guess, but it's somewhat remarkable that it's such a round number. To put it another way, if we could see the earth from the sun, all the light of that image of our planet is sunlight reflected back, and the round trip, is 1,000 seconds even. It's a bit remarkable to me.

but the second is a human construct - it's not tied to any natural phenomena

did the jews or romans divide the day into 24 hours?

 

[Idolater]

but the second is a human construct - it's not tied to any natural phenomena

Right, so why should it just so happen that it takes 1,000 seconds exactly for light to travel from the sun to the earth and back? It's just ... too 'nice' of a round number for me, to not be a little suspicious that ... idk. That we somehow are going in a circle somehow. :idunno:

did the jews or romans divide the day into 24 hours?

idk. Who then divided hours into minutes, and then minutes into seconds?